Ontela’s picture survey results

Seattle-based Ontela, which is creating a photo sharing service for mobile phones, said it conducted a survey that — surprise, surprise — finds that consumers need such a service.

Ontela said that in a survey of more than 500 consumers, it showed that while people are increasingly selecting camera phone handsets, they are frustrated by the difficulty of accessing the pictures.

It found that 40 percent of phone owners would consider changing wireless service providers in order to get a seamless photo-sharing experience.

And, in support of Ontela’s mission even more, it said respondents also indicated they would expect to pay for the service when a carrier delivered images to users’ popular photo sharing sites, such as Windows Live Spaces, Facebook, Snapfish and Flickr.

Other findings include:

— 80 percent responded they do not use MMS or Internet browsing, and two-thirds reported that they had never purchased games or photo wallpapers.

— 75 percent of consumers were unable to transfer photos from their current phone to the PC.

— 85 percent prefer that their next phone has a camera.

— 87 percent of users said they want to upload pictures to a photo-sharing site, but no single destination was unanimously selected.

About

Welcome to Microsoft Pri0: That's Microspeak for top priority, and that's the news and observations you'll find here from Seattle Times technology reporter Matt Day. Send tips or comments to mday@seattletimes.com.